Pfeiffer, Christoph, a German divine, i hymnologist, was born al Oels in the year 1689. For two years he was assistant-preacher al Lirs.iorf.wl.cn he was called, March 28, 1719, by the duke lb * or, von Landskron to the pastorate al Dittmansdorf, mar Fran- kenstein, in the principality of Munsterburg. Having occupied this position for twenty-seven years, he was called to Stolz, where he spent the remainder of his life, and died Dec. 23, 1758. Mis picture in the church there has the motto, "Mea Christus Portio," and the fol- lowing epigraph: -Mors tua vita mea est, tuaque, O dulcissime Jesu, vulnera sunt animee Pharmaca certa Pfeiffer is the author of many hymn.-, several of which are found in our modern hymn-books. See We/el. Hymnop. (Herrastadt, 1728), iv, 397 sq.; Koch, Gesch. 'I. devtschen Kirchmliedes, v, 742 Bq. {I',. I'.j
PFEIFFER
PHAEDO
Pfeiffer, Madame Ida, .1 German lady, whose maid- en name was Reige, is noted as a traveller in the East, and as a valuable contributor to Palestinian topogra- phy. She was born in Vienna about the year 1795. From her very childhood she longed to see the world, and ever read with delight books of travel. In her girlbood she travelled to some extent with her parents, and subsequently with her husband. After the death of her husband and the maturity of her sons she deter- mined to undertake a journey to Palestine, that she might have the ineffable delight of treading those spots which our Saviour had hallowed by his presence. With the accumulated wealth of twenty years, she left Vienna in March, 1842. Her journey included Constantinople, Broussa, Beirut. .Tafia, Jerusalem, the river Jordan and the Dead Sea, Nazareth, Damascus, Balbec, the Liba- nus, Alexandria, Cairo, and the Desert to the Red Sea ; then back by Malta, Sicily, Naples, Rome, etc., to Vienna, where she arrived in December of the same year. Upon her return she published anonymously the diary she had kept during her trip, under the title of lieise eiiier Wie- nerin in das Heilige Land (Journey of a Vienna Woman in the Holy Land). In 1845 Madame Pfeiffer visited Sweden, Norway, and Iceland. In 1816 she made her first journey round the world. In 1851 she made a sec- ond expedition, visiting the United States, and upon her return published an account of all her travels. But of all her descriptions those of the Holy Land are far more interesting than any of the others; owing doubt- less to having been less hurried then than while making her trips round the world. Throughout the whole of her arduous journeys Madame Pfeiffer displayed great courage, perseverance, and womanly tact. The mere fact of her having accomplished what no male traveller ever has done is conclusive evidence that she was pos- sessed of great endurance and fortitude. She died in 1858.
Pfeil, Ciiristoph Carl Ludwig von, a descendant of an old knightly family, was born Jan. 20, 1712, at Griinstadt, not far from Worms. When ten years of age he was left an orphan, and his uncle, the Rev. Jus- tus S. von Pfeil, of Magdeburg, took him into his house. Here he remained for six years, when, at the age of six- teen, he entered the University of Halle for the study of jurisprudence. In the year 1729 he went to Tubin- gen to continue there his studies, where he became a faithful follower of Christ. In 1732, at the age of twenty, he was appointed secretary of legation of the Wlirtemberg government at Regensburg, and in 1737 he was appointed counsellor of law at Stuttgard. For thirty years he held the highest honors in Wlirtemberg, until, in the year 1703, he removed to Prussia, when Frederick the Great awarded to him new honors. Pfeil died Feb. II, 1781. He was a very pious man, ami the different stages of his life are best marked in his poeti- cal productions and hymns, which number about 940. Not all of his hymns have found their waj into hymn- books, especially as most of them are influenced by Zinzendorf and Bengel, whose ideas are more or less reproduced in them. Those, however, which are found in our hymn-books are really jewels of German hym- nology. A collection of his hymns has been published by the Rev. G. Knack, of Berlin (1850, 1853), under the title Evangel. Herzensgesange. Besides his hymns, Pfeil 1A1 in MS. a rhymed translation of Job, Proverbs, Ec- ciesiastes, Song of Songs, the Lord's Prayer, the apos- tolic epistles, etc. See Teichmann's biography in the preface to his Christl. Hausschatz (Stuttgard, 1*52): Merz, Das Leben des christlichm Dichters und Ministt r$ C. C. L. von Pfeil (ibid. 1863); Koch, Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes, v, 170 sq. (B. P.)
Pfenninger, Joiiann Conrad, a German theolo- gian, was born at Zurich, Switzerland, in 1747; studied theology at the university of his native place; in 177." was made dean of the Orphans' Church, and later was appointed the successor of his friend Lavatcr (q. v.) ii.
the pastorate, and was also made the dean of St. Peter's Church. He died in 1792. Pfenninger was a volumi- nous writer and much involved in controversy with the Rationalists, who then so very generally abounded in Germany. He was in close harmony with the theolog- ical views of Lavater, and with him attempted to give to his period a secure Christian impress, so as to lift Christianity from its Oriental vestments, and place it upon the ground of universal humanity. While the sceptics, and even Spalding among them, regarded modern Christianity rather as a purely comprehensible and abstract, fact, and excluded every contribution of the imagination, Lavater and Pfenninger, like Klop- stock (q. v.), thought it best to render aid by the West- ern imagination. They made Christianity not only ac- cessible to the modern understanding, but to the modern feeling. Most valuable of all of Pfenninger's publica- tions are his Judische Brief e aus der Zeit Jesu v. Naza- reth (1783-92), which have been freely used by Stier in his Words of Jesus (transl. by Strong and Smith, X. V. 3 vols. 8vo). These Jewish letters furnish a sort of Christian romance, in which the men and women of the time of Jesus write letters to each other, just as senti- mental men and women of the last century would have written, and Christianity was thus modernized to make it attractive and plain to the masses, and relieve it of the Oriental garb it wears in the Bible. (J. II. W.)